PASKIINGSUCKS

I'd get in on this for me and the GF. We are right down the road and planned on buying passes there this year anyway.

If a hired photog. actually had a head on their shoulder they would know where to stand to stay out of the way and still get the shot. Hell a mtn employed photog. could also act as a polite park ranger, if they're standing next to the jump anyway they could call all clear or tell little kids to remove themselves from landings and the like. Kid's might listen to and even respect someone with a camera and a BC jacket. This of course all depends on the photographer being a cool person and being park savvy. It could work for the better I think.

Sounds like a good idea. They should just offer that in the lodge so if ya wanna hire the guy for 1 pic or to film for 1 hour your price could be adjusted. It would keep the guy from wandering around in the park all day giving it that amusement park feel. I'm sure people could do this on their own, but it seems like it would be an asset to the mountain to have somebody employed to do that and make bank for them. At least that way you wouldn't have to rely on your buddies who may cut off your head or not get their setting right and end up looking like you were shooting at night. I could see people psyched about this if your a gaper or a trickster.

I don't know man, I'm not a huge ocean waterbug or anything but that shit was cold, like low 60's, we were by lewes delaware and it's only showing 68 today. regardless of the water temp I wasn't gonna try it out on 1 foot waves that were crashing on the sand. I'll be down there for 5 days on my birthday so I'm gonna try it out then.

I didn't even get to use it yet, the waves that day were non-existant. I'll be back down in early july for several days and hope the water is a little warmer then too.

Very Very interested, will most likely be heading down your way this weekend too. If it's not sold yet I'd be more than happy to give ya what your asking. We would be heading down to DE but we go right past the walt whitman, I could easily cross and meet ya over there somewhere on the way down. I'll pick it up this weekend if your still selling it.

Would you go 250?? Where are you located??

I would love to be a park ranger at BC. I've been nicely using skate parks and ski parks for basically as long as they have been around. I think I could keep my cool and explain the right way to ride park to the youngins. I do see major gaperage going on at bear allllll the time, but like stated many times you can't just yell at people who don't know what is dangerous. The best we can do is try to educate people in a polite manner, sure you can poke fun and tease about their gaperness but you don't need to be angry or hateful to someone who obviously shows interest in a section of the sport that you also enjoy. Sure at BC I've wanted to smack a gaper or two but you have to stand back for a second and say "hey I was that stupid at one point and I sure wouldn't enjoy a slap while I was trying to learn. It's like good karma, if you show a little respect and share a little knowledge you'll be surprised how fast it will multiply and we will end up with more understanding and safer riders in the park. At 6 pages this wasn't really a long read, and it was fun to see some PASR history come to light in the form of backstory as to why ski seems to utterly loathe papa. This board does seem a bit uptight but then again I'm used to newschoolers.

HHAHAHAHA I could swear I had seen that thing before and it must have been here. I happened upon this little snowman on my way through maine this weekend and had to stop for a few pictures. That is one huuuuuuge snowwoman for sure.

Made the short road trip friday night up to Jay, left bear creek area around 4 and was passing Jay in the moonlight by around midnight. Jay was incredible on Saturday, knee deep and then some in the woods everywhere we went. Skied some tree runs in between the trails for the start of the day and then went over to the dip for a few runs before I had to take off a bit early to continue on up to maine. Skied jay from about 8:30 till 2:30, then drove up to visit non-skiing friends in maine about an hour north of sugarloaf and arrived around 7 pm. Spent the night and breakfast with friends in The Forks maine (big rafting area around three rivers) then back down south to arrive at sugarloaf around 10. I suited up in a big white easter bunny costume and made for guest services, only to find out they stopped the free ticket for easter costumes promotion this year. (thanks new management) So after a small amount of bickering, since I had called a week earlier and they said the promotion was still good, the ticket clerk got his manager and I got my free ticket. Got on the mountain to many hoots and hollers from all, and made my way over to skiers right for the king pine lift and nasty tree skiing on Can't Dog. Stayed over there pounding bumps and dodging trees till about 3pm, even stopped for a few folks who wanted pics with the easter bunny. Bolted around 3:30 and cruised I95 all the way down to stamford to catch 287 and head back west to 78 and pennsylvania arriving home around 1am last night. What a whirlwind of a weekend but it was definately the best skiing all year for me. I've got some pics to try and put on here but unfortunately I didn't have the cam with on saturday at jay so I have a couple pics from the bottom and some from on mountain at sugarloaf.

What kinda discount do they offer, I'm with Upper Bucks Ski Club and I purchased a discount ticket through them. 1 anytime jay ticket $34. Also I heard the catamount trail organization or something up there gives some good discounts all over vermont if you donate enough to be a member.

Awesome, I still have two free tickets from the KOP jam burning a hole in my pocket.

Wait woah what's this. Please explain, is it just free altogether you just gotta hike??? I live like two minutes away I'll definately take advantage of this. I can testify to the bad weather up there, I live right down the road and the temp hardly hit freezing and I thought the wind was gonna drop trees on my place. I'm not surprised they didn't try anything.

I'm taking full advantage of this. A nice road trip to sugarloaf for easter has now turned into a powderfest of Saturday at JAY!!!!!!!! I'm meeting another NSer up there who is a local so hopefully I get shown around a bit. Then it's on to Sugarloaf on Sunday to wear the easter bunny suit again for a free ticket, I just bought the costume too so it looks like this is gonna end up being a tradition for me and sugarloaf. I'll try and get plenty of pics and hopefully when I get back I'll have some success at posting them here.

I'm pretty sure it is the job of the police to worry about my rate of travel thank you very much. I'm against riding someone's butt for sure as it is dangerous, on the other hand if someone is camped in the fast lane I have no sympathy. Just cause your going 60 in a 55 doesn't give you the right to hog it up over there, if I'm going 75 just get the hell over and let the cops do their job. I won't dangerously ride bumper, but I will wave at you in the rearview, flash lights, creep over to the left and give you headlights in the driver side mirror, and anything else that would relatively safely tell you I WANNA GO FASTER THAN YOU DO. Don't force people to travel at a speed that you deem to be safe.

Amen to that. The patroller who took my pass even passed on the story that I heard on here about the employee who died in the trees, he said he was on that call. I'm all for safety but if they cut out tree skiing at every resort where someone has died in the trees, well there wouldn't be much tree skiing.

I visited elk again this past weekend for the fresh snow they got. It snowed off and on all day which was pretty cool and made for good conditions. Left my backpack at home which meant no camera, but made up for it by bringing a cooler of beer. We had about seven friends and got a sweet spot in the parking lots just above the quad, we actually skied down to the car through the woods for lunch and end of day. Met some REAL rowdy older fellas drinking faaarrrrr more than we were, and got to see em bite it hard in the moguls later in the day which was pretty funny. I actually made it all the way until 4pm before me and two others had our passes pulled for being in the trees waayyy over to skiers left. Huge thanks to the very nice female patroller who caught me and didn't pull my pass around 10am, she also informed me of how strict the other patrollers were(I later found out) and that they even had a collection of clipped tickets for fun in the shack. I was respectable to the guy who pulled my ticket, hell I even clipped it for him with MY leatherman, but as soon as they saw us I heard the one patroller yell "take their passes!". I guess that's what I get for wearing a bright yellow jacket in there, I might have to invest in snow camo outerwear. Anywho we waited for the nice patroller to yell at some other folks in some other trees and then he continued on his way. We got back into the woods for our last run of the day and took it all the way down passed the pond and right to the front of the car. I also gotta say even though the park is kinda shotty, the kids there know what they're doing as far as calling a drop and not standing in landings and whathaveya. Also the rope tow was running which was cool.

I think as cheesy as it sounds most resorts could do well with a diagram picture of jumps and rails showing how to stay away from the front and back of features. Maybe big blaze orange signs on the side of the trail next to landing that say DON"T STAND HERE. Skiing jumps for years and riding skate parks has made park etiquette pretty much second nature for me, so I just can't understand it when people do stuff like this. I realize however that not everyone knows how this stuff works. The worst gaper show I've seen this year was at bear creek, I actually saw a little kid not take enough speed into a jump and he fell right on the lip. This kid then tried to side step up the lip for several minutes before actually TAKING OFF HIS SKIS AND WALKING UP THE LIP I guess park passes is really the only way to assure that people will read or hear the necessary info and warnings about parks. As far as all the talk of lawsuits above, ugh, I think I'm gonna be sick. Can't people get hurt anymore and not demand compensation for what was their fault in the first place, why is it always someone else's fault. OK I let my kid do the terrain park without explaining risks, my bad I'll pay her doctor bills, is that impossible these days. Just to hard to turn away easy money I guess.

I guess I just need to move to Maine or out West somewhere. I'm sorry but I don't see "It's PENNSYLVANIA" as a reasonable excuse to be afraid of lawsuits, I guess it's just the people down here that ruin the atmoshpere of skiing because they are not as comfortable with the risks of a mountain lifestyle. I would like to know how complaining about wanting to wear a backpack while skiing is weak. I realize this is PA and you don't need a beacon or probe, but am i out of line because I don't wanna go into the lodge everytime I want to grab my cam and take pictures or perhaps take off a shirt and keep it on my person. Also as someone who likes to ski fast and take risks I enjoy the extra back pad of wearing my pack, I spilled from a motorcycle once with a pack on and was completely unscathed on my hind side. In the unlikely event of going ass over tin cups into a tree I'd like a pack and waterbottle between us. Also for the employee death in the trees, I'm sorry I have experience with loss just like anyone else, but I feel that is just a risk that goes with the territory. Being in administration the GM will always have to bring down bad news like that, I'm not saying it will ever be easy, but if someone died from hitting a lift pole I doubt they would default to tow ropes. I realize they are cutting down the amount of injuries and potential suits and that is a good thing for them, something about it just seems wrong to me that I have to scale back the way I want to ski depending on what state I'm in. I guess I could have left out all this and just posted the first sentence, or just said "See Username". The more I ski the less I wanna ski in PA would also describe how I'm feeling lately.

I could go for a deal like that maybe, let me get out this weekend and knock the dust off my rail and box skills. We'll see about registering in the very near future. I'll be there to watch the event regardless.

I realize I was bashing a little bit in my e-mail but I tried to make it as nice and constructive as possible. I love Elk, I've skied there many many times in the past 5 years, I just think they need to loosen up a bit. I wanna be able to explore the whole mtn. without fear of being reprimanded or stripped of my day pass(I should say that never happened) for skiing in the woods. I have been yelled at there for skiing in and out of trees on the sides of groomers and for being in the woods. Also the free run on the quad needs to be brought back badly, nothing like skiing a mountain for years and then being greeted by a sign one year that basically says they don't trust you anymore. Also my huge pet peeve there is the fact that they don't allow backpacks I like to carry stuff when I go out, I have aided our whole group before by being the only one carrying a huge waterbottle, I like to get pics of the skiing we do, and I like to be prepared with a pretty stocked first aid kit. All that stuff isn't gonna fit in my jacket, basically I'm a dude that throws on the boots at the car and puts a sandwich in the pack and I'm on the slope all day. No backpacks is a huge inconvenience to me personally. Don't even get me started on their park. I realize their not trying to attract that crowd but come on, if your gonna do something ya might as well do it right. My group of 5-8 friends will not be hitting elk anymore this year, and we usually do about half a dozen times a year. Instead we'll take the shorter drive to JF/BB or SNO, or the slightly longer drive to belleayre or hunter, that is if we're not already going to VT or further. End Rant

My e-mail to Elk about my weekend experience. Dear Elk Mountain, I regret to inform you that I am writing today simply to comment on my dissatisfaction with your ski resort. I have always liked Elk Mountain in the past and have always regarded you as The Best In Pennsylvania. I firmly believe that you have the best terrain of any ski resort in Pennsylvania, my problem starts with your reluctance to let people into that terrain that I and friends long for. Elk has the best trees and steeps combined in PA but they are also combined with enough blaze orange fencing to reach to the moon and back. I realize that in the world today liability is a huge issue, and people are quicker to sue now than ever, but you guys are the best in PA and I expect you to set an example for the rest of the Poconos to follow. Your mountain has no marked glade runs whatsoever???? Granted every time we are there we find our way into some woods, but usually end up being reprimanded for our adventurous spirit. Last weekend we were there and got a great look at some of the mountain that would be fantastic for skiing after a storm, for instance if your riding up the north quad and at the beginning you look left there is boatloads of open trees, boulder drops, and a creek to jump. Sadly though this area like so much of the rest of your trees is OFF LIMITS, it is so bad at your resort that I have been yelled at by patrol for darting in and out of trees on the SIDE OF GROOMED RUNS!!!!!! I ask you guys, hell I